Farmer's Market

Is Summer Over?

Drank the last St Lupulin. All of the Palisade peaches are gone. No more Rocky Ford melons to be found. And the Sweet Olathe corn is scarce.

Yep, summer's over.

Bring on the chili! (Stay tuned ... ) And dust off your Dutch oven.


Post Script: Okay, I'm full of crap. Talked to a couple of farmers this week and we have the whole rest of September to enjoy plentiful Rocky Fords ... as long as we're looking at farmer's markets and not the supermarkets. (Are there regularmarkets out there? JustOKmarkets?) And they're still shipping some peaches from the Western Slope.

Last one before Labor Day

One of our new year's resolutions was to pay a lot closer attention to the amount of food we buy. We've never shown a lot of discipline in that area. Dual income, no kids ... so we bought what we wanted, cooked most of it up, ate as much of it as we could ... but we threw away quite a bit as well. Lots of fruit and veggies that we bought with good intentions but never got to, or huge dishes that made for leftovers to the point in which we were sick of it, and then it all went into the trash.

So conscientious consumption was a priority for 2010, and we kicked butt for the first half of the year. We made menu plans which turned into very specific shopping lists. And when we made big dishes, we froze half of it from the get-go, so we didn't have the Eight-Days-of-Lasagna syndrome.

Then along came the screaming bundle of joy.

Cooking mit kinder can be a challenge. There's no time for planning, let alone executing, so at first we were eating a lot of fried egg sammiches. But after the first month, we decided we needed to get back in gear and pay closer attention again.

But we just don't have the time to sort through recipes, so we've been counting on Providence to show us the way. And what works for me is, to toss a magazine in the air and see how it lands.

I randomly grabbed a mag from the shelf and opened it to some place in the middle, and landed on this from the July Bon Appétit. It was a feature on 80 different ways to serve up hot dogs. Hot dogs? Seriously? You need a recipe for hot dogs? But I looked as the recipe, and it called for things we happened to have on hand. And after a quick perusal through the fridge, it looked like the hot dog combo would go great on grilled chicken as well, with a potato salad we were planning on making anyway.

Result? Well, first of all, these were the best hot dogs I've ever had. And second, there was not one ounce of wasted food. What wasn't consumed the first time around made it into the second dish, so we never had the same thing twice and didn't throw away any of it.

So, here's the basic recipe from Bon Appetit:
(click the image of their hot dog on the right to see their original recipe)

Hot Dogs with Dal and Red-Onion Raita

Lentil Dal
½ cup lentils
2 ½ cups water
1 tsp cumin
¼ tsp turmeric (or play around with your own combo of curry powders)
kosher or sea salt to taste

Red-onion Raita
½ red onion, thinly sliced
2 Tbs fresh mint, finely chopped
2 tsp minced chile pepper of any sort (seeded for a milder flavor, seeds in for hotter)
2 tsp lemon juice
2 Tbs plain yogurt

Hot dogs and buns, or grilled naan or pita bread

Dal: Rinse the lentils, then bring to a boil in a sauce pan with the water and spices. After it reaches a boil, simmer (covered) for about 30-35 minutes. Either scoop out the lentils or drain the pan, saving the water. Mash the lentils into a course paste, adding a bit of the water as necessary to make a topping that will spoon easily onto the dogs.

Raita: Mix everything into a non-reactive bowl and let stand for 30 minutes.

(As you can see, this is one of those efficient recipes, because it all takes about the same amount of time. Brings the lentils to a boil, mix the raita, and finish the dal while the raita sits and does its thing.)

Meal #1: To keep things simple, the first day we just served the dogs on hot dog buns, with a side salad.

Meal #2: Because dal and raita was already made and we didn't really need to make anything else, we used the free time to grill up a little naan to use instead of buns.

Meal #3 and #4: Instead of hot dogs, we used the left over dal and raita on top of grilled tandoori chicken.

Grilled Tandoori Chicken

3 chicken breasts
2 Tbs lemon juice
1 Tbs water
1 tsp salt
¼ tsp turmeric
½ cup plain yogurt
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 Tbs chopped fresh ginger or 1 tsp ginger powder
½ tsp ground coriander
½ tsp ground cumin
dash cayenne
(or, your favorite combo of curry spices)
2 Tbs olive oil

Rinse the chicken breasts and pat them dry with a paper towel. Using a carving knife, score the chicken across the tops and bottoms, about an inch apart. Set aside.

In a glass pan about the same size as your chicken, mix the lemon juice, water, salt, and turmeric. Coat both sides of the chicken and let it stand for 5-10 minutes.

While it's marinating, mix all of the remaining ingredients. Coat the chicken again and let it marinate for another 10-15 minutes.

Generously oil the grates of your grill, and grill according to your grill's normal chicken time/temps.

Serve with the dal and raita from the day before. We served it alongside the green bean / potato salad from the other day (the lemony, herby dressing worked great with the curry-ish chicken) and a tomato/cuke salad (tomatoes, cucumbers, with a very light dressing of red wine vinegar, olive oil, and sugar, with a bit of feta on top), and a bit of grilled naan again.

Labor Day variations on a theme

I've been having a pretty good summer but I find myself in a quandary, which is troubling because I'm not even sure what a quandary is. But it seems I've just gotten started with summer dining fare and it's already time to move on to fall and winter grub.

Colorado throws me off that way. The best farmer's market offerings are in August, which is just a stone's throw from the end of the year. Palisade peaches, sweet Olathe corn, and Rocky Ford melons come and they go so damn quickly ... you can't find them, can't find them, can't find them ... then all of a sudden they're everywhere, and then before you know it they're gone.

The weather doesn't help. It's 90º today, 75º tomorrow, and 90º again by the weekend. So who knows whether you should be splitting a watermelon on the porch or hunkering down in front of the fire with a bowl of stew?

That's where we are with Labor Day. Typically the last major grill-fest, and yet it doesn't feel like summer any more.

Which is why I'm thinking of one-off versions of typical summer grill and BBQ stand-bys. Baked beans and potato salad, but just a wee bit off.

Potato Salad with Green Beans and Salsa Verde, via Napa's Long Meadow Ranch Winery.

Instead of mayo, the salsa verde and lemon zest and juice makes this a bright and versatile salad that goes well with just about everything, and makes for a nice summer/fall transition side.



Salsa Verde

¼ cup olive oil
¼ cup chives, finely chopped
¼ cup parsley, finely chopped
(or substitute ½ cup of other seasonal herbs)
2 Tbs mint, finely chopped
1 tsp lemon zest
2-3 Tbs lemon juice
1-2 garlic cloves, crushed
salt to taste

Mix everything in a small bowl (at least one cup) and let it stand at room temperature for about an hour.

Potato Salad

1—1½ pounds potatoes, 1 inch cubes
2-3 Tbs butter
1 lb trimmed green beans

Boil the potatoes for 8-10 minutes in salted water, then drain and toss with 1-2 Tbs of butter (or olive oil). Lightly salt. Then boil the beans for 3-4 minutes, just until tender. Drain and toss with 1 Tbs of butter. Optional: after draining, dunk the beans in a large bowl of ice water for a minute to preserve the color.
Clean up saver: instead of draining the potatoes, scoop them out and transfer them to another bowl, preserving the water. Then boil the beans in the potato water. This saves water and energy, since you're not bringing two pots of water to a boil separately.

Mix the potatoes and beans, then coat with the salsa verde. The author recommends serving immediately, but this will keep at room temperature for a few hours or can be saved in the fridge until you're ready.


Chipotle-Maple Black Beans, via the Cuisine at Home folks.

1 medium onion, diced
1 Tbs olive oil
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbs apple cider vinegar
2 cans black beans (drain or not drained, doesn't matter)
½ cup maple syrup
½ cup ketchup
* 1-2-3 chipotle chiles in adobo, minced
1 tsp dry mustard
1 tsp worcestershire sauce

*Lots of ways to go here. Use one chile with its seeds, or two or three chiles with or without seeds, depending on how hot you want it. Start on the low end and work your way up unless you know everyone likes it hot. A grapefruit spoon is an easy way to remove the seeds: just cut the chile length-ways and scrape the seeds out.

Saute the onions over medium-high heat for 3-4 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for another minute. Deglaze with the vinegar, then turn to high and bring to a boil. Add everything else, reduce to medium low, and simmer for ten minutes.
At this point, you can serve them up if you want, but it's better to turn it down to low, cover with a slight vent, and simmer for a good hour. Or, if you don't mind getting two pots dirty, you can saute the onions and garlic, deglaze, then move everything to a crock pot on high for 1-2 hours.

Little Girl

Here's why the posts have been few and far between lately:

Quick trip to Alaska and San Francisco

First trip to Alaska in five years:

Quick stop in San Francisco on our way back home from Alaska.

For those of you in the DC area:

Best Banh Mi:

Arugula Files: Is the Banh Mi the new Cupcake? (Plus the Best Banh Mi in the DC area)

Not-so-Happy Meal

Crazy ... McDonald's hamburger's don't age.

August News Round-up

Scanning the headlines ...

Meditation for a Stronger Brain. More and more evidence is piling up that the brain is just one big muscle, capable of being "trained" in ways we never imagined before.

The world's most powerful drug: Coffee. But does it really work the way we think it does?

Food Fight! Pick your favorite movie meal.

Music and motivation: does music help you work out harder, longer, more intensely?

Fruit leather vs Real food. Not quite a full serving of fruit after all.

The end of cheap food? No definitive answers but some good discussion both ways.

Sustainability: Is it even possible?

Mobile Food Carts: an urban farm in a box on wheels.

Cooking for Geeks

Back to school edition here, revving up the brain with some quick, easy, and edible science lessons.

From last week's Science Friday, New Frontier For Geeks: The Kitchen.

In Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food, software engineer Jeff Potter discusses using the hacker mindset in the kitchen, from cooking salmon in the dishwasher to a warranty-voiding experiment on his oven to get the scorching temperatures necessary for perfect pizza crust.

Other Science Friday episodes you might want to revisit:

The basil blight that is threatening our pesto.

Do-it-yourself gardening.

The science of cheese-making.

Chef Wylie Dufresne experiments in his laboratory/kitchen.

The evolution of beer and the science of beer bubbles. (Your eyes don't always tell you the truth.)